Medical records can contain a wide variety of information such as patient demographics, visual and medical history, diagnoses and treatments. Many hospitals and medical providers create and store this body of information in paper charts. Some hospitals and medical providers are gradually replacing paper charts with digital medical records in order to, for example, reduce medical errors, improve efficiency and reduce healthcare costs.
Digital medical record software presently available can permit a user to enter a patient's medical information through, for example, selection of a descriptive sentence from a drop-down list or manual user entry. Drop-down lists have predetermined entries and may not provide complete or accurate medical information. If additional information needs to be entered, it may be necessary for the user to enter the text manually. However, entering long text entries can be time-consuming and can be difficult to process.
Additionally, some digital medical record software can permit the creation of pixel-based drawings. A user can view these pixel-based drawings and can, for example, attain a personal understanding of a medical condition. However, apart from their illustration, digital medical record software may be unable to extract information from these pixel-based drawings.